Apacia
Apacia, also feared as the Queen of Tombs, is one of the last remaining true Cappadocians and is allied with the Sabbat. She aided Augustus Giovanni in his Conspiracy of Isaac to purge the Cappadocian clan, only to be betrayed by him. She leads a motorcycle gang named the Skiths. Biography In her distant lifetime, Apacia was a slave to the in Eurasia. Apacia grew up in the house of her father (who was also her owner), servant to his wife. She helped her mistress with the myriad duties the wife of a warrior might need done, keeping their home clean and fine and polishing her owner's weapons. Eventually, as she did not get any siblings, her father trained her in arms and made her into a warrior. She became the guardian of the tombs of the ancient Scythian kings, a position of great honor, even if that meant that she would never go to war. She soon got bored of her duties, a trait that her soon-to-be sire, Malenchaenos, exploited. He entered one of the tombs to use it as a resting place during the day and made her his ghoul to protect him. He had come to learn the ways of the Scythian ancestor worship and their funeral rites. This continued for three years, until Malenchaenos heeded a call he would not make known to Apacia. Before he departed, however, he Embraced the tomb guardian, bidding her to defend his haven while he was gone. His absence lasted for only a few years, during which Apacia learned the arts of the dead from the whispering of her ancestors. When the Persians came, she led various Scythian tribes in a guerilla warfare against them, until she noticed the Cainite master behind them. After the other vampire assured her that the Persians merely wanted to travel through the Scythian lands, the attacks ceased and the two parted, sharing bits of blood with each other. In time, Apacia left her people behind and took up wandering Europe and North Africa, exploring its many peoples. It was during this wandering that she first met others of her clan. During these years, Apacia served several Cappadocians as a guardian, thanks to her skill at arms. She remarked in a black humor that she was as good a Cappadocian as any, but that her true skills with the dead were simply in making them. Even the Lamia regarded her with respect for her skill at battle. Eventually, her talent came to be noticed by Cappadocius himself, who made her his general in the attack against the mountain keep that would later become Erciyes. Before long, however, the denizens of Erciyes came to resent Apacia's disinterest in their studies and philosophies. Indeed, many of them considered her an embarrassment to the clan's blood, as she remained stubbornly illiterate. Eventually, she and her childe Rudori were asked to leave. The two ventured to Kaymakli, but Apacia was as unhappy there as she was in Erciyes. Melancholy and ill-tempered, Apacia found a resting place in the great underground city, slipping into a torpor of many decades. When she awoke, stories of the fall of Rome reached her. She ventured there, to find her sire in the upper echelons of the local Cappadocians. Eventually, she returned to her homeland, performing the ancient funeral rites to ease the restless ancestors, as the Scythians were no more. She returned briefly to Rome, parting with her sire and her childe and wandered off to the north, spending much time among the barbarian tribes and wandering further into wild country. When she reached Russia, Apacia came to be revered as a queen by several tribes of people called the Avars, in the frigid Khanate of Sibir. These people won her heart, for she saw in them the echoes of her own ancient peoples. She eventually fell in battle against the Garou of the Silver Fangs, sinking again into torpor. Joining the Coup of Augustus When she finally awoke, the Feast of Folly had already taken place. She traveled south to Kaymakli to visit her childe, only to find a tomb sealed by the curse of Cappadocius himself. When she sensed that both her sire and her childe were among the imprisoned, she tried to break the doors open, but to no avail. In Derinkuyu, she was alerted of the fate of both of them. Furious, she traveled to Erciyes, demanding the release of her kin. Unfortunately, Japheth did not grant her audience with the torpid Cappadocius, claiming that the fate of Malenchaenos and Rudori was deserved and hinted that she should be among the imprisoned as well. He renounced her claim to the Blood then, calling her "Infitiore". Although she was not Japheth's equal in age or potency of the blood, she was a dedicated warrior where he was not, and she broke him against the marble walls of the temple, allowing her precious time to escape his judgment against her. She found refuge with Augustus Giovanni, Japheth's brother in blood, who hid her in Venice. When she learned of his plans to usurp the Clan, she was more than willing to aid him, under the condition that he would break the seal of Kaymakli. She slaughtered her own clanmates where necessary to open the routes for Augustus to reach Cappadocius, and she did so without remorse or hesitation. In the end, however, the Giovanni betrayed her, attempting to destroy her as a lingering Cappadocian. Joining the Sabbat Apacia fled once more to her "mother tomb", the tomb she had claimed as her first haven, among the tombs of Scythian kings. There she entered a deep and mournful torpor in which the screams of her clanmates echoed in her dreams. She woke, ravenous, less than a century later, slaking her thirst on a patrol of Ottoman Turks. Still wary of the Giovanni, she traveled east into Wallachia, pretending to be a much younger Brujah vampire. Her puissance was quite evident, and she served as bodyguard to more than one territorial vampire lord of the Land Beyond the Forest. It was in such a situation that she first truly encountered the Sabbat. Ieremia the Porcelain Lady, a Tzimisce of middling power, had been aggressively "petitioned" by fellow Fiends. Members of the nascent Sabbat, they demanded that she join their cause. The paranoid Ieremia refused them, and Apacia met these Sabbat in battle. Forced from Ieremia's side by a pair of Lasombra brutes, Apacia was not present to witness Ieremia's destruction. Apacia slew the vampire responsible for the Tzimisce's diablerie and then "surrendered". She told them that her duty to Ieremia was discharged, and asked that they cease the slaughter that she might ask them some questions. She learned what happened in the time of her torpor and discussed the philosophies of the Sabbat. In the end, the two came to terms. The Sabbat would take her to the closest Diocese, that she might undergo the ritae that might make her one of them. The elder Tzimisce there recognized Apacia's age by the strange Scythian tattoos that covered her body. Hedging their bets, they sent for a Priscus to meet and induct her. That was how Apacia met Sascha Vykos, a young firebrand Tzimisce who was enchanted not only with her graceful savagery, but her ethnic tattoos as well. The two then traveled to her tombs, where Apacia underwent the Creation Rites and became one of the Sabbat. On that pilgrimage, however, the two shared blood both in the form of Vinculum and as lovers. Something foul passed from Vykos to the much-older Apacia, an evil borne in the blood of those Tzimisce who themselves practice the abomination of Vicissitude. From those nights onward, the tattoos that had been Apacia's last link to her Scythian tribe took on a significance of their own. The marks of the serpent that adorned her upon occasion subsumed her, bringing her after a short and bloody chrysalis into a serpentine creature herself. Despite her newfound horror, Apacia made a place for herself in the Sabbat quickly and easily. Her bloodborne fascination with burial customs and graves served her well in the nascent death-cult, and her itinerant tendencies fit well with the nature of Sabbat nomadic packs. In the modern nights, Apacia serves as a Bishop of the sect, though were she so inclined, she could probably rise to greater heights. She is the favored warleader sent to oversee multiple packs in crusades where another, lesser leader has already failed, or is in danger of failing. The only time that Apacia is known to actively volunteer for such endeavors is when the crusade has named as its enemy the Giovanni. In the 1960s, Apacia became fascinated with an American nomadic culture that resonated with her own origins: motorcycle gangs. Apacia has gathered to herself a sizeable, national level motorcycle gang called the Skiths, who use a tattooed skull as their emblem. Interspersed in the membership of the Skiths are nomadic Sabbat packs who consider themselves loyal to Apacia first and foremost above any other Sabbat authority, though she rarely takes an active hand in their activities. She is also direct responsible for bringing the Harbingers of Skulls into the Sabbat's fold, introducing them to Vykos and sponsoring their petition to join the Sabbat. Now, she often leads campaign to their aid. Appearance Apacia is a tall, strong teen, appearing as a blonde of about five foot, nine inches in height. She wears motorcycle leathers with ripped-up jeans and t-shirts and tall motorcycle boots. Her arms are usually bare, and show off the extensive tattooing she was given as a Scythian warrior, which extends across her collarbone, up her neck and across the left half of her face. When she indulges the great nigrimancies that are the legacy of her clan, however, she takes on the aspect of a snake. Her appendages become serpentine, her face an ophidian mask. The tattoos that crisscross her now scaled skin writhe of their own volition and her slitted eyes glint brassy as they drink the light around them. Character Sheet References * Category:Cappadocian Category:Sixth Generation vampires Category:Methuselahs Category:Vampire: The Masquerade character